


The Coming Spring

by Margo_Kim



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: F/F, Femslash Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margo_Kim/pseuds/Margo_Kim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hel’s crown, her hollow ring of rusted metal from the breast armor of a long dead hero whose name no one alive remembered except herself and you could hardly say she counted. Her crown did not glint. Her crown did not shine. It dug a bloody wound into her flesh. It scraped a regal groove into her bone. Persephone wore no crown. In the spring, she wove flowers in her hair, and in the winter they clung to her still and rotted. Soon the blossoms shook apart when you touched them, and Hel tangled the stinking petals into Persephone’s long red hair until the flower queen could not move without shedding crinkled death behind her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Coming Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at [my tumblr.](http://margotkim.tumblr.com/post/68856993754/first-snowfall-femslash-yuletide-mythology)

They were nearly done with tea when Persephone shook the cake crumbs from her fingers and said, “It’s nearly time for me to go, you know.”

“Rude,” Hel said. She squatted in her chair as she always did, her chin resting on her flesh hand resting on her flesh knee while the bones of her other hand dangled her empty tea cup from her pinky.

“You’re one to talk of rudeness.” Persephone smiled as she said it. When she smiled, flowers bloomed, clouds parted, life began. It was that smile that was the problem. When Hel smiled, and part of her always smiled, people who saw found their jaws locked tight with their returning grins. “Is it rude that I am leaving or that I am telling you about it.”

“I know you’re leaving. There’s no reason to ruining lunch by bringing it up.”

“Should I have just slipped away without a word?”

“Rude. You’re doing it again. Talking about it. Didn’t they teach you not to speak of ugly subjects at the table?”

Persephone sipped her tea through her light little smile. “They?”

The bones wrapped around the tea cup extended one cold, white digit upwards. “Them.”

“If you mean my mother and aunts and uncles,” Persephone said with the tilt of her head that she did because she was too well-reared to toss it, “they taught me to speak on flowers and sunlight and long sleeping seeds. Do those subjects belong at your table?”

Hel shivered and sneered. She distrusted things in the ground that wormed their way out. 

Persephone smiled again, a dimmer smile if not yet a dark one. “I thought not. You’ve a taste for the ugly.”

“You’ve a taste for pomegranate,” Hel said, “but I don’t force it down your throat.”

“I do nothing of the sort now. I merely remind you—it is almost time.”

Hel tossed the tea cup. Some monster scooped it up before it hit the ground and disappeared back into the dust. “My people come from a harsher land than yours. The frozen children with bloody feet come staggering into my home, and you think I do not know that winter must end.”

“I never knew you to mourn.”

The flesh of Hel’s mouth curved up. “I miss the summer deaths. A little variety keeps the soul young.”

Persephone finished her drink and rested her mug on the table with a delicate clink. Everything she did, she did delicately. “Then you don’t mind that I go.”

“I rage every day until you are back. Then I rage a while longer.”

Persephone lowered her eyes as she wrapped her shawl tighter around her. Hades had given it to her two hundred seventy-six winters ago. He’d commissioned it from the Fates themselves, and they’d woven a story into the threads that not even the gods could read. Hela knew that, though Hades and Persephone had told no one. Hela may reign in a darker world than that of Asgard, but she sat on a throne of her own, and she saw such sights as Odin never cast his eye upon. “We do what we must, Hel,” Persephone said softly.

Hel sighed through the empty hollow of her cheek. “With bitter hearts to bitter tasks. Isn’t that what it means to be a god?” She stretched and straightened as best she could and slid out of her chair to Persephone’s side. “Come.” She rested her bone hand on Persephone’s forearm and smiled at the familiar shiver. “I’ll show you out.”

Arm in arm, they walked in the tunnels that wound the dark, secret places in the earth and sky. This was Hel’s slice of the underworld. Only Hel knew the paths, and the paths knew only Hel. Persephone clung close as they wound and curved through the dark. They made a good pair. Persephone was small enough to fit into the crook of Hel’s bones. Hel was tall enough to grate her head against the rock ceiling. She’d be taller still if she stood up straight, but she’d crouched and scuttled and slunk too long for her spine to uncurve. She kept her chin high though. No crowned head may droop. 

Her crown, her hollow ring of rusted metal from the breast armor of a long dead hero whose name no one alive remembered except herself and you could hardly say she counted. Her crown did not glint. Her crown did not shine. It dug a bloody wound into her flesh. It scraped a regal groove into her bone. Persephone wore no crown. In the spring, she wove flowers in her hair, and in the winter they clung to her still and rotted. Soon the blossoms shook apart when you touched them, and Hel tangled the stinking petals into Persephone’s long red hair until the flower queen could not move without shedding crinkled death behind her. 

Hel knew it was time for winter to end. Persephone’s flowers were almost gone.

“Your husband’s left you to me,” Hel said as the tunnel started its final slope up.

“We said our goodbyes last night,” Persephone replied. “And he may visit me in the sun if he truly wished. Will you?” Hel said nothing. “I thought not. You seem to need the final goodbye more.”

“You flatter yourself.”

“Am I wrong? What happened to your rage?”

“It comes and goes much as you do.”

“And yet when the first snows of winter come, I hear you calling out my name throughout the entire underworld.”

“When the first snows of winter come, you send me bodies by the score. Why should I not want to thank you for breaking the monotony of the summer deaths?”

“You thank me as no one else does.”

“Not even your husband?”

“Not even he. My lord’s bite is far sweeter than yours.”

“Then what good is it as a bite?”

They’d nearly reached the surface. The circle of light blazed before them. They halted before the sun could hit Hel’s skin and skeleton, and Persephone grabbed Hel’s flesh arm. “Truly, Hel, will you miss me?” Persephone asked with more innocence than she had ever possessed.

Hel’s laugh scraped as rough as the rocks of the tunnel. “You know the answer.”

“Say it to me anyway.”

Hel grazed her skeleton finger down Persephone’s warm, pink cheek. “If I had stolen you from the field that day, I would not have waited for you to be tempted by seeds. I would have borrowed my dear brother Fenrir’s fetters and chained you to my throne for all your days.”

When Persephone smiled, flowers wilted, clouds gathered, life choked. Persephone rewarded Hel with that smile now, and it felt like a stranger’s cold hand scratching against the back of her neck. Persephone rested one delicate hand on Hel’s face and turned it to look at the bone side. And then, on raised toes, Persephone pressed her lips to Hel’s exposed teeth. “I’ll see you at the first snowfall,” she whispered into Hel’s cheek, into the hollow of Hel’s skull. “When you can hold a frozen babe to your rotting breast, you will know that I am come home.”

With that, Persephone slipped free and without one backward look skipped into the sunlight. Hel, alone, shivered in the tunnel, in the dark, in the blessed dark, and began the long count until the Earth became once again as cold as Persephone’s beautiful heart.


End file.
